politics

Lake Effect's Bonnie North is in Europe this month as part of a journalism fellowship through the RIAS Berlin Commission. It's a program that exposes American journalists to the workings of European politics and media.

President Trump defended his "America First" agenda in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, in effect spiking the football at what his secretary of state described as the "Super Bowl of diplomacy."

The president boasted that he's accomplished more during his time in office than almost any previous administration — a claim that drew immediate laughter from the assembled diplomats and other world leaders.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh says he isn't considering withdrawing following more allegations of sexual misconduct from decades ago, and he proclaimed his innocence in a new TV interview Monday evening.

"I'm not going to let false accusations drive us out of this process," Kavanaugh told Fox News' Martha MacCallum in an interview alongside his wife, Ashley.

Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago, will testify Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Attorneys for Ford reached an agreement with committee staff on Sunday after days of negotiations over the conditions and details of her appearance. The terms of their agreement provide that Kavanaugh will also appear before the committee, but he will not be in the room while Ford is speaking or being questioned.

Hours after President Trump announced tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods, China responded with its own levies on $60 billion worth of U.S. products.

Chinese state television on Tuesday reported that the government has decided to impose tariffs of 5 percent to 10 percent on $60 billion worth of U.S. products, starting on Monday. The tariffs will apply to 5,207 items.

Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is close to reaching a plea deal that would avert a trial scheduled to start later this month in Washington, D.C.

No details were immediately available about the charges to which Manafort might plead guilty or whether he might cooperate with prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person asked not to be identified.

The tentative deal was first reported on Thursday evening by ABC News.

The White House is accusing Senate Democrats of an unfounded "11th hour attempt to delay" a vote on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement Thursday afternoon disclosing that she had referred "a matter" involving Kavanaugh to "federal investigative authorities."

While there are aspects of the news coming out of Washington that sound like satire, it’s hard to be sure. With Will Durst, an award-winning political satirist and Milwaukee native, you can be sure it's satire. Though he now lives in California’s Bay Area, Durst is back in his home state for shows in Madison and Milwaukee before touring in Europe.

"I know what you're going to ask and I don't know!" Durst says right off the bat. "I've heard that people are so tired of hearing about Trump, I've heard that people can't get enough of Trump."

Day 3 of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh featured a morning quarrel over documents as members concluded two days of public questioning of Kavanaugh. Here are some of the highlights:

House Speaker Paul Ryan called on the author of the widely read New York Times op-ed critical of President Trump to resign, arguing that the individual was "living in dishonesty."

The essay, posted Wednesday afternoon and attributed to a senior administration official, suggested that there is a group of high-level Trump administration officials working to stymie the president behind the scenes.

The confirmation of a Supreme Court justice is often a major event that ripples through American law for decades. But Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, which opens Tuesday, is especially historic because, if confirmed, Kavanaugh is expected to solidify a hard-right majority on the nation's highest court, a majority the likes of which has not been seen since the early 1930s, and which is likely to dominate for a generation or more.